commonsense adj : exhibiting native good
judgment; "arrive home at a reasonable hour"; "commonsense
scholarship on the foibles of a genius"; "unlearned and
commonsensical countryfolk were capable of solving problems that
beset the more sophisticated" [syn: commonsensible, commonsensical]

English

Adjective

Common sense (or, when used attributively as an
adjective,
commonsense, common-sense, or commonsensical), based on a strict
construction
of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that
which they "sense" (in
common) as their common natural understanding. Some people use the
phrase to refer to beliefs or propositions that — in their
opinion — most people would consider prudent and of sound judgment, without reliance on
esoteric
knowledge or study or research, but based upon what they see as
knowledge held by
people "in common". Thus "common sense" (in this view) equates to
the knowledge and experience which most people
allegedly have, or which the person using the term believes that
they do or should
have.

Common-sense ideas tend to relate to events
within human experience (such as good
will), and thus appear commensurate with human scale.
Humans lack any commonsense intuition of, for example, the behavior
of the universe at subatomic distances; or speeds approaching that
of light.

Philosophy and common sense

"Common sense" in philosophy
has two general meanings:

a sense of things being common to other things

a sense of things common to humanity

Aristotle and Ibn Sina

According to Aristotle and
Ibn Sina
(Avicenna), common sense provides the place in which the senses
come together, and which processes sense-data and makes the results
available to consciousness. Thus the
modern psychological
term, "perception",
fulfills the same function. Individuals could have different common
senses depending on how their personal and social experience has
taught them to categorize sensation.

Locke and the Empiricists

John Locke
proposed one meaning of "common sense" in his
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This interpretation
builds on phenomenological
experience. Each of the senses gives input, and then something
integrates the sense-data into a single impression. This something
Locke sees as the common sense — the sense of things in common
between disparate impressions. It therefore allies with "fancy", and opposes "judgment", or the capacity to
divide like things into separates. Each of the empiricist
philosophers approaches the problem of the unification of
sense-data in their own way, giving various names to the operation.
However, the approaches agree that a sense in the human
understanding exists that sees commonality and does the combining:
"common sense".

As a response to skepticism

Two philosophers, Thomas Reid
and G.
E. Moore, champion a different approach to defining "common
sense". They advocate the view (to state it imprecisely) that
common-sense beliefs express the truth and form a foundation for
philosophical inquiry. Both Reid and Moore, individually, appealed
to common sense to refute skepticism.

Reid

The Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid
(1710-1796), a contemporary of Hume and the
founder of the so-called
Scottish School of Common Sense, devotes considerable space in
his Inquiry and in his Intellectual Powers into developing a theory
of common sense. While Reid never provides an explicit definition
as such, a number of so-called "earmarks" of common sense
(sometimes referred to as "principles of common sense"), appear,
such as:

"principles of common sense are believed universally (with the
apparent exceptions of some philosophers and the insane)"

"it is appropriate to ridicule the denial of common sense"

"the denial of principles of common sense leads to
contradictions"

Reid of course explicates his case more
extensively than appears presently in this article.

Moore

The British philosopher G. E. Moore
(1873—1958), who did important work in epistemology, ethics, and other fields near the
beginning of the twentieth century, wrote a programmatic essay,
"A
Defence of Common Sense" (1925). In this essay (which had a
profound effect on the methodology of much twentieth-century
Anglo-American
philosophy) Moore lists several seemingly very obvious truths,
such as "There exists at this time a living human body which is my
body", "My body has existed continuously on or near the earth, at
various distances from or in contact with other existing things,
including other living human beings", and many other such platitudes. He argues (as Reid
did previously) that these propositions contain more obvious truth
than the alternative premises of those philosophical claims which
entail their falsehood (such as J. M.
E. McTaggart's claim that time does not exist).

Epistemology

Appeal to common sense characterises a general
epistemological orientation called epistemological
particularism (the appellation derives from Roderick
Chisholm (1916-1999)). This orientation contrasts with epistemological
methodism. The particularist gathers a list of propositions
that seem obvious and unassailable and then requires consistency
with this set of propositions as a condition of adequacy for any
abstract philosophical theory. (Particularism allows, however,
rejection of an entry on the list for inconsistency with other,
seemingly more secure, entries.) Epistemological methodists, on the
other hand, begin with a theory of cognition or justification and
then apply it to see which of our pre-theoretical beliefs survive.
Reid and Moore represent paradigmatic particularists, while
Descartes
and Hume stand as paradigmatic methodists. Methodist methodology
tends toward skepticism, as the rules for acceptable or rational
belief tend to the very restrictive (for instance, Descartes
demanded the elimination of doubt; and Hume required the
construction of acceptable belief entirely from impressions and
ideas).

Particularist methodology, on the other hand,
tends toward a kind of conservatism, granting perhaps an undue
privilege to beliefs in which we happen to have confidence. One
interesting question asks whether epistemological thought can mix
the methodologies. In such a case, does it not become problematical
to attempt logic, metaphysics and epistemology
absent original assumptions stemming from common sense?
Particularism, applied to ethics and politics, may seem to simply
entrench prejudice and other contingent products of social
inculcation (compare cultural
determinism). Can one provide a principled distinction between areas of
inquiry where reliance on the dictates of common sense seems
legitimate (because necessary) and areas where it seems
illegitimate (as for example an obstruction to intellectual and
practical progress)? A meta-philosophical discussion of common
sense may then, indeed, proceed: What is common sense? Supposing
that one cannot give a precise characterization of it: does that
mean that appeal to common sense remains off-limits in philosophy?
What utility does it have to discern whether a belief is a matter
of common sense or not? And under what circumstances, if any, might
one advocate a view that seems to run contrary to common sense?
Should considerations of common sense play any decisive role in
philosophy? If not common sense, then could another similar concept
(perhaps "intuition")
play such a role? In general, does epistemology have "philosophical
starting points", and if so, how can one characterize them?
Supposing that no beliefs exist which we will willingly hold
come what may, do there though exist some we ought to
hold more stubbornly at least?

Alternative views

Opponents of one of the traditional views of
common sense sometime regard reliance on common sense (in its guise
as "received knowledge") as an impediment to abstract
and even to logical
thinking. This view appears especially popular in mathematics and physics, where human intuition
often conflicts with "probably correct" or experimentally verified results. A
definition attributed to Albert
Einstein states: "Common sense is the collection of prejudices
acquired by age eighteen."

Participants in political debates sometimes
appeal to common sense, particularly when they have exhausted other
arguments. For example, partisans have attacked civil rights
for African
Americans, women's
suffrage, and homosexuality — to name
just a few — as contrary to common sense. Similarly, opponents of
many scientific and technological advances have invoked common
sense. Such misuse of the notion of common sense exemplifies the
fallacy
of argumentum
ad populum (appeal to the masses).